III. The Early Renaissance (1350-1500)
IIIa. The Florentine Group.
The end of the 13th century brought with
it not only Dante Alighieri's poetry but also a golden age of
music. Dante numbered among his friends many painters and
musicians; unfortunately the works of these musicians have not
been preserved, especially those of Dante's friend. Pietro
Casellas. 1332 is the date of the earliest writings on the
subject of Madrigals. However,
Giovanni da Cascia
, who today is considered the first musician of that school,
was born in 1270, only a few years after Dante's birth. There
followed
Jacopo da Bologna
,
Ser Gherardello
, Laurentius da Florentia and many others. Through them:
Florence developed as a center of a new school of music which
spread all through Central and Upper Italy.
The full list of trecento (it. 1300, but also 'renaissance')
composers was apparently a long one. The text of Jacopo da
Bologna's madrigal,
Uselletto selvaggio,
says that everybody is writing
ballate,
madrigals, and motets, that all are blossoming forth as
"Filipotti et Marchetti" (the ironic metaphor referring to
Philippe de Vitry
and
Marchettus of Padua
). Florence was the great center of this activity. But, as the
names of the musicians show, contributions were made also by
Bologna, Padua, Perugia, Rimini.
The period of Italian
trecento
music does not actually coincide with the span of the 14th
century: it begins about 1325 and ends about 1425. Leonard
Ellinwood has, on the basis of the chronological order
apparently followed in arranging the contents of the
Squarcialupi
Codex
--one of the chief MSS of the period--and on the basis of the
type of notation devices employed by each composer, assigned a
large number of the
trecento
composers to three different generations, thus:
The first generation:
Giovanni da Cascia
(= Giovanni da Firenze),
Jacopo da Bologna
,
Bartolino da Padua
,
Grazioso da Padua
,
Vincenzo d'Arimini
(= Rimini),
Piero da Firenze
.
The second generation:
Francesco Landini
(= Landino),
Paolo tenorista
da Firenze
,
Niccolo da Perugia
,
Ghirardello da
Firenze
,
Donato da
Firenze
,
Lorenzo da Firenze
,
Andrea da Firenze
, Egidio, Guglielmo di Santo Spirito.
The third generation:
Zacherie
, a papal singer from 1420 to 1432,
Matteo da
Perugia
, Giovanni da Genoa,
Giovanni da
Ciconia
,
Antonello da
Caserta
,
Filippo da
Caserta
, Corrado da Pistoia,
Bartolomeo da
Bologna
.
Little is known about the lives of most of
these men. Giovanni da Cascia was, in the first half of the
century, organist at Santa Maria del Fiore and closed his
career at the court of Mastino II della Scala at Verona. It is
his creative force and that of composers of his
generation--Jacopo da Bologna, Piero, Lorenzo--that gave
trecento
music its native impetus. Jacopo was a theorist as well as
composer. Some time before 1351 he became the teacher of
Francesco Landini.
Landini was the most important of these
composers, who was, even at that time, rated highest by his
contemporaries. He was born in Florence about 1325 and was
completely blinded early in his youth. His musical activities
were to him an enormous source of joy and consolation. He
fabulously mastered a number of instruments, especially the
"organetto," a small portable hand organ, which was then a
popular instrument for secular music.
The birth of the Renaissance with its
leanings toward a more secular life, its joys and its sorrows,
created an enormous stimulant to the imaginative fancies of
Landini and his contemporaries. Their manner of expression gave
the dance and love-song new characteristics. The secular pieces
are written chiefly in three forms: the madrigal, ballata, and
caccia.
The origin of the term
madrigale
has been traced with the help of a passage in an early
14th-century work by Francesco da Barbarino. He uses
matricale
(Latin for "belonging to the womb" or "matrix") in referring to
a form of song. It is therefore held that madrigale originally
denoted a poem in the mother tongue. Antonio da Tempo, writing
in 1332, used independently the word mandrialis to designate a
rustic kind of pastoral poem, popular at the time, this term
being a fusion of the older term
madriale
(a dialectical use of madrigale) and
mandria
(Italian for "sheep-fold").' The form of the term as used in
the MSS of
trecento
music undergoes considerable variation.
The "Caccia," as its name implies.
originally dealt with hunting of other realistically animated
scenes. In: most cases the canon is used to achieve the utmost
in tonepainting effects. An excellent example of this style is
Gherardello
's magnificent caccia "Tosto che I'alba" (the huntsman awakens
early when the morning of a beautiful day dawns), with the
imitation of exciting hunting calls and sounding of horns. The
Ballata
is actually a dance-song usually written for two voices with an
instrumental counterpoint.
Landini
's
Ballata
"Gram piant'agl'occhi" shows such fine melodic development that
this piece was labeled "as perhaps the most beautiful one of
that century".
This and many other compositions of
Landini and his contemporaries have been preserved in the form
of a magnificent vellum manuscript, now at the Bibliotheca
Laurenziana in Florence; it is considered to be the most
important and detailed source of this art. It is called the
"Squarcialupi Codex" after its onetime owner, the famous
organist
Antonio
Squarcialupi
, who lived 100 years after Landini, at the court of Lorenzo
the Magnificent.
The Composers
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